News

This is a short summary of activities within the ACP during the months January-March 2010.

The 2010 ACP Executive Committee comprises the following people, in alphabetical order (officers identified)::

John Hooker

Jimmy H.M. Lee - Secretary

Pedro Meseguer - Conference Coordinator

Barry O'Sullivan - President

Karen Petrie

Thomas Schiex - Treasurer

Peter Stuckey

Roland Yap

ACP Summer School 2010

The ACP Summer School 2010 will be held in Aussois (France) from May 3rd
to May 7th 2010, and it is organized by Yves Deville and Christine Solnon.
The school aims at introducing the grounds of CP as well as more challenging
research areas of CP. At this point 53 students have registered for the school,
and 18 grants have been given to support the attendance of those who have
limited funding. These grants are sponsored by the ACP and the AFPC (the French
Association for CP).

We are reissing the Call for Bids for CP 2012.
[ Please see the attached call ]

Surplus from CP 2009

Pedro Barahona, CP Conference Chair in 2009, has finalised the accounts for
the conference, which was held in Lisbon. The ACP is delighted to report that
CP 2009 has declared a good surplus for the community. A total of €10,005.90
has been returned to the ACP. The ACP would like to extend our thanks to
Pedro for running an excellent conference last September.

Report from the CP Standardisation Group

On March 25, 2010 Java Community Process (JCP) published the Early Draft Review
of the JSR-331 "Constraint Programming API" see:

It includes the initial Java CP API that is a result of multiple discussions
between different CP experts and vendors. Several open source implementations
of the JSR-331 are already on the way (Choco, Constrainer, JaCoP). Any CP
vendor who wants to create a JSR-331 implementation may receive a secure access
to the JSR-331 SVN repository now. Any CP practitioner, who wants to write a
CP-based program in Java using JSR-331 API, can already do it with the
alpha-implementations. Remember that the JSR-331 architecture allows a user
to switch between different implementations without changing a line of the
application code. Please direct all inquiries to j.feldman@4c.ucc.ie orNarendra.Jussien@emn.fr. All CP experts and practitioners are welcome to
provide their comments and suggestions or join JSR-331 as members of the
Expert Group or as observers. Check the latest CP Standardization news athttp://www.cpstandards.org and share your opinion at the Discussion Forum.

Call for Nominations: for the ACP Distinguished Service Award 2010.

The Executive Committee of the ACP invites nominations for the inaugural
(2010) ACP award for Distinguidhed Service to the Constraint Programming
Community, which will be presented at CP 2010 in St.Andrews, Scotland, in
September 2010. The purpose of this award is to celebrate those CP community
members who have made exceptional contributions to the CP community. Areas of
service could include, but are not limited to: association service, service as
an editor, conference organisation, representation of CP in other organizations,
etc, resulting in positive effects on the field of CP. The recipient of this
award will have the costs of is/her participation at the CP conference covered
by the ACP. The call text for this award is appended to this report.

Call for Nominations: for the ACP Doctoral Research Award 2010.

The Executive Committee of the ACP invites nominations for the 2009 ACP
Doctoral Research Award, which will be presented at CP 2010 in St.Andrews,
Scotland, in September 2010. The ACP Doctoral Research Award is awarded
every year to a promising young researcher working in the area of
constraint programming and who defended his/her thesis between January and
December of the previous two years. The call for nominations for this award
is included in this edition of the CP-News.

Sponsorships

The ACP has sponsored the First International Summer School on Constraint
Handling Rules to the value of €1500. Details of this event can be found at:

This year there will be additional elections to replace those EC members
whose terms will expire at the end of this year. A formal call for
nominations will be circulate, but in the meantime please consider the
names of those you think would be suitable for the ACP-EC.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS TO HOST CP-2012

We invite proposals to host the 18th International Conference on the
Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP-2012). Proposals are
due on or before June 1st, 2010. These proposals will be evaluated by the
Executive Committee of the Association for Constraint Programming and a
decision made for the site shortly afterwards.

The CP conferences are the premier international conferences on constraint
programming. They have been held annually since 1995. CP 2010 will be held
in St. Andrews (Scotland) and in Perugia (Italy) in 2011. Previous CP
conferences have been held in Lisbon (Portugal), Sydney (AUS), Providence RI
(USA), Nantes (Frances), Sitges (Spain), Toronto (Canada), Kinsale (Ireland),
Cornell (USA), Paphos (Cyprus), Singapore, Alexandria (USA), Pisa (Italy),
Schloss Hagenberg (Austria), Cambridge (USA), and Cassis (France).

Proposals should be up to two pages of plain text and should address the
following numbered topics:
1. Proposal for conference chair(s).
2. Local CP community support.
3. University, government and industry support, especially financial.
4. Proposed dates, and flexibility around these dates.
5. Co-located events that might be held alongside CP.
6. Conference and exhibition facilities (CP typically attracts between 200 and 250 delegates).
7. Accommodation and food services.
8. Site accessibility, attractiveness, and desirability.
9. Previous experience in running conferences and workshops.
10. Provisional budget.

If available, please include URLs to any additional information (e.g. web
site for the conference venue or hotel).

Guidelines for the CP conference organization, as well as the duties of the
conference chair(s), can be found on the ACP web site.

Proposals should be sent to the secretary of the Association for Constraint
Programming committee preferably by email to secretary@a4cp.org. In preparing
a proposal, please feel free to address questions (e.g. regarding
the suitability of the proposed dates) to the same address, or to
any member of the ACP Executive Committee.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR THE

Association for Constraint Programming

DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD 2010

OVERVIEW

The Executive Committee of the ACP invites nominations for the inaugural
(2010) ACP award for Distinguidhed Service to the Constraint Programming
Community, which will be presented at CP 2010 in St.Andrews, Scotland, in
September 2010. The purpose of this award is to celebrate those CP community
members who have made exceptional contributions to the CP community. Areas of
service could include, but are not limited to: association service, service as
an editor, conference organisation, representation of CP in other organizations,
etc, resulting in positive effects on the field of CP. The recipient of this
award will have the costs of is/her participation at the CP conference covered
by the ACP.

ELIGIBILITY

Nominations for this award are invited from members of the ACP.

NOMINATION PROCESS

A nomination package consists of a nomination form from one nominator, and
reference letters from at least 2 references.

Typically, a nominator is somebody who knows the nominee very well, and locates
the references, ensuring that they do their parts in time to produce a
convincing nomination package. Ideally, a reference is a well known member of
the CP community who has never had a very close relationship with the nominee,
but who can speak with authority for him or her.

Nomination forms should follow the form below and should be sent (nomination
forms by the nominators, and reference forms by references) by email tosecretary@cp-online.org.

TIMEFRAME

The nomination package must arrive at the above address by June 21, 2010.
We cannot accept anything received after that date. We will acknowledge
receipt of nominations. The decision will be available on July 12, 2010.

AWARD COMMITTEE

Every other year, an Award Commmittee will decide the award receipient among
the nominees, and will include: the president and secretary of the ACP-EC,
two previous recipients of an ACP award or senior members of the community,
and the program chair of the CP conference where the award will be given.
Members of the award committee cannot be candidates, nor can they support
a candidate by being a nominator or a reference.

Enquiries concerning nominations should be directed to the ACP EC Secretary
at the address secretary@cp-online.org.

4. List principal positions of service to the CP community, and briefly describe
primary responsibilities for each position. Examples of service positions
include society service, service as an editor, conference organization, etc.,
resulting in positive effects on the field of CP.

Position:
Dates:
Responsibilities:

5. Proposed Citation (to appear on the award certificate -- citation should
begin "For contributions to the field of constraomt programming through
sustained service ..." followed by a phrase of not more than 20 carefully
edited words that reflect this candidate's demonstrated service to the
community):

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS FOR THE

Association for Constraint Programming

DOCTORAL RESEARCH AWARD 2010

OVERVIEW

The ACP Doctoral Research Award will be awarded every year to a promising
young researcher working in the area of constraint programming and who
defended his/her thesis between January and December of the previous two
years. The award, in the form of a certificate, will be presented at the
CP 2010 conference, where the winning researcher will present a talk on
the topic of his/her doctoral dissertation.

ELIGIBILITY

Eligible doctoral researchers are those who defended their doctoral thesis
between January 1, 2008 and December 31st 2009 in the area of constraint
programming. The researcher must be a current member of the Association for
Constraint Programming.

NOMINATION PROCESS

Nominations must be made by the thesis supervisor, who is responsible
for ensuring that the following items are submitted to the secretary
of the ACP at secretary@cp-online.org.

1. A URL to a zip-file containing the following items:

- A PDF version of the dissertation. No specific
language for the dissertation is imposed;

- A PDF of an extended abstract of the doctoral dissertation,
3-5 pages in length, written in English;

- PDF versions of each of up to five papers published at international
peer-reviewed conferences or journals based on the work reported in
the doctoral dissertation;

- A PDF description, and pointer to, any software or systems developed
during the research;

- A PDF version of a nomination letter from the supervisor of the research.

2. In addition to the supervisor's nomination letter, two additional letters
should be forwarded directly to the secretary of the ACP from two referees,
selected by the dissertation supervisor, supporting the submission and stating
their assessment of why the thesis should win the award. These letters will
not be shown to the research supervisor or the candidate.

The selection of the winning candidate is based on the originality, impact,
and quality of the research work. The evaluation will consider all
contributions to the CP community, including publications, software
and systems.

The work of the candidates will be reviewed by a committee of researchers
selected by the ACP Executive Committee, based on the nominations received.

This summer school is supported by the Association for Constraint
Programming (http://4c.ucc.ie/a4cp/). Constraint Programming (CP) is a
programming paradigm for modeling and solving constrained optimization
problems, such as complex resource planning, scheduling, configuration
and design problems.

The program will include both introductory courses on the grounds of CP
(including practicals with the Comet programming language), and advanced
courses on challenging research areas of CP. The list of speakers
includes Pascal Van Hentenryck, Laurent Michel, Pierre Flener, Christophe
Lecoutre, Gilles Pesant, Jean-Charles Régin, Thomas Schiex, Yves Deville,
Christine Solnon.

The school is organized in the Paul Langevin center, located in Aussois
(1.500m), in the National Parc of la Vanoise, in France.

Applications to attend the school are encouraged from PhD students
interested in constraint programming, or any related area. A limited
number of grants will be available.

As part of the "blue-washing" of ILOG, the academic licensing system for
IBM's OPL Studio, constraint programming system, and CPLEX has changed
to become part of IBM's Academic Initiative Program. Here is the full
announcement:

Effective February 15, 2010, IBM is offering no-charge full-version ILOG
Optimization products via IBM's Academic Initiative program
(http://www.ibm.com/academicinitiative). This move builds on the
availability of limited Teaching Editions available since August 2009,
and now provides registered members with renewable one-year access to IBM
ILOG OPL-CPLEX, CPLEX, CP Optimizer and CP for both teaching and research
use. Registered members can access ILOG Optimization software at:
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/university/software/get_software.html,
where they can search for ILOG Optimization or individual solvers by
name. Depending on the search criteria, electronic assemblies will be
retrieved for IBM ILOG OPL Development Studio, CPLEX, CP Optimizer or CP
on all commercially available platforms. To run the software, members
will also need to download a key from:
https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/university/support/ilog.html, but are
no longer required to install ILM.

The aim of the summer school is to familiarize the participants with
state-of-the-art high-level declarative programming with rules and
constraints as well as providing insights into the analysis of programs
based on these concepts. The courses cover a wide range from theory to
practice.

The summer school provides courses at various levels. It is open to
anyone interested. It aims at Phd. students, but also post-docs,
interested researchers and master students as well as interested parties
from industry. Besides a working knowledge of English, there are no
prerequisites. A basic knowledge of logic and Prolog that is usually
covered in undergraduate classes could be helpful.

Lectures and Courses:

The programming language CHR will be introduced by several lecturers on
the first day of the summer school.

A final evaluation for each course is possible through a final exam or
project as determined by the instructor. The daily schedule admits
laboratory, recitation or working group activities to be organized in
addition to lectures.

Registration:

The registration fee for the School is 300 euro and includes teaching
material with book, as well as accomodation and coffee breaks. Meals are
not included. Attendance is limited to 20 students and will be allocated
on a first-come-first-served basis. Without accommodation the
registration fee is reduced to 200 euro.

Location:

Leuven is a lively student town in Belgium with a very high density of
pubs offering hundreds of types of local beers.

2011 marks the 20th anniversary of the design of the programming
language and logical formalism Constraint Handling Rules (CHR). To
celebrate this event,
we plan a collection of essential papers on CHR in book form.

We would like to know from you which papers you consider best to
represent the CHR research during the last two decades.

The aim of the MiniZinc challenge is to compare various constraint
solving
technologies on the same problems. The focus is on finite domain
propagation solvers. An auxiliary aim is to build up a library of
interesting problem models, which can be used to compare solvers and
solving technologies.

Entrants to the challenge provide an interface to their solver via the
FlatZinc solver inputs language and a set of MiniZinc global constraint
definitions specialized for their solver. Each solver is run on 100
MiniZinc model instances.

Note that even if you don't intend to submit a solver to the challenge
you are welcome, encouraged even, to submit MiniZinc problems for use in
the challenge directly to the organizers or to the MiniZinc wiki

Other Publications

Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is a metaheuristic which has been
successfully applied to a wide range of combinatorial optimization
problems. This book describes ACO and studies its efficiency for solving
hard combinatorial problems, with a specific focus on constraint
programming. The text is organized into three parts.

The first part introduces constraint programming, which provides high
level features to declaratively model problems by means of constraints. It
describes the main existing approaches for solving constraint satisfaction
problems, including complete tree search approaches, local search and
metaheuristics, and shows how they can be integrated within constraint
programming languages.

The second part describes the ant colony optimization metaheuristic.
Beyond the ant metaphor, it describes the mechanisms which allow
artificial ants to converge towards solutions and, more particularly,
those used to balance diversification and intensification.

The third part illustrates ACO on different constraint satisfaction
problems, and shows how to integrate ACO into a constraint programming
library, thus combining the expressive power of constraint programming
languages, to describe problems in a declarative way, and the solving
power of ACO, to efficiently solve these problems.

CP-AI-OR 2010, The Seventh International Conference on Integration of
Artificial Intelligence and Operations Research Techniques in Constraint
Programming, June 14-18, 2010, Bologna, Italy.http://cpaior2010.ing.unibo.it/

Career news

DOCTORAL POSITION FOR DATALOG RESEARCH

Declarative Languages and Artificial Intelligence Group
Department of Computer Science
Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium

The Declarative Languages and Artificial Intelligence Group at the
Catholic University of Leuven is looking for doctoral research candidates
in the area of Datalog. The position concerns research related to
integration with constraint solvers, problem modeling, language
development, program optimization, refactoring, profiling, debugging, ...
Close collaboration with our US-based industrial partner is expected.

Applicants should have a masters degree in Computer Science or
equivalent. Experience in at least one of Datalog, logic programming
(Prolog, ASP, ...), databases or constraint programming is required.
Implementation experience is an important asset.

Appointment to the doctoral position will be for the period of one year
initially with possibility for extension to four years ending in a Ph.D.
The salary is compatible with the departmental rates for doctoral
research fellows.

Notice of interest (including motivation and CV) should be received as
soon as possible. Review of applications begins as of March 1, 2010, and
the start date is determined in consultation with the selected candidate.

- Summer Internships available
University of Dundee

Two summer internships in topics related to Constraint Programming are
avalible at the University of Dundee. These are funded by the Royal
Society at the rate of a £1000 bursary per month. I am ideally looking
for candidates who would like to do a PhD after their degree, as this
will be a taster session for this further study.

One of the projects would be suited to a strong C++ programmer with a
good algorithms background. The second is on information visualization,
so would suit someone interested in HCI or Design. A Constraint
Programming knowledge would be advantageous

You will also have the chance to attend the international Constraint
Programming Conference in St Andrews.

Conducting statistical analyses of complex clinical and pathological
datasets can be challenging. Consequently, we developed an automated
statistical analysis system "MOSAIC" to analyse a variety of different
data types using a combination of diverse analytical and statistical
tools. Unfortunately, this tool currently has a major draw-back. A full
set of analyses for a small dataset may take a few hours, whilst for
medium and large datasets the time taken to answer all the research
questions may be days, weeks or months. This creates a considerable delay
on the results of this medical research being published.

The goal of this research project is to create a new version of the
MOSAIC system which will overcome this flaw. It is envisioned that this
will require a wide range of computing skills, including skills from the
domain of constraint optimization to prioritize the order in which the
statistics are calculated. The successful candidate will have an
excellent knowledge of programming, preferably in C++.

The main supervisors on this project are Dr Lee Baker
(L.Bake@dundee.ac.uk) and Dr Karen Petrie
(karenpetrie@computing.dundee.ac.uk) Lee Baker is a member of the
University of Dundee Medical School and an expert in medical statistics.
Karen Petrie is a member of the School of Computing and works in the area
of Artificial Intelligence, specializing in combinatorial optimization.

Arts & Métiers ParisTech (center of Aix-en-Provence) is inviting
applications for a 3-year PhD position in Computer Science on the
research topic Model-driven Collaborative Product Design.

The research activity will aim at investigating and developing new
techniques, methodologies and support tools for collaborative product
design, using model-driven engineering and reasoning technologies in
order to enhance software capabilities, interoperability and dynamic
integration. Both theoretical and practical results are expected.
Candidates should thus have a strong background in knowledge
representation, automated reasoning and software engineering together
with an open mind on the specific challenges of the application domain
(collaborative product engineering with PLM and CAX approaches).

The position is embedded in a project "Virtual Engineering of Mechanical
Systems", which is part of the LSIS Laboratory (UMR CNRS N°6168). The
work will mostly be carried out within the national project "Alliance of
Digital Data" (Alliance des Données Numériques - ADN), funded by the
research and industry french ministries.

Offer:

* A 3-year PhD position in Computer Science
* Work in a first class and highly active research group (LSIS) in a
friendly working environment;
* Salary: 2240 Euros/month (gross)
* Starting date: September 2010.

Profile:

* Candidates must hold a master degree in computer science or related areas;
* The ideal candidate should have a strong background in knowledge
representation and software engineering, in particular in model-driven
engineering techniques and/or constraint-based reasoning.
* Candidate should be willing to apply his research in the context of
product engineering. Knowledge about mechanical systems and
collaborative design will be appreciated but is not mandatory.
* Candidates should possess good oral and written English skills.

Applications should include an introduction letter indicating the
motivation, a detailed CV including copies of the MSc diploma and
information about the grades, the names and contact details of two
referees. We accept only electronic submissions, which should be sent to
Lionel Roucoules (lionel.roucoules@ensam.eu) and Mathias Kleiner
(mathias.kleiner@ensam.eu). The deadline for applications is **June 30,
2010**.

More information can be obtained from Lionel Roucoules and/or Mathias
Kleiner.

The Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers (ENSAM) is a
prestigious higher-education engineering school. It is a public
scientific, cultural and professional institution (EPCSCP) under the
supervision of the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research.
The Aix center is located downtown in the city of Aix-En-Provence, at
the heart of the south-east region of France (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur).

Job Posted: 22 Mar 2010
Closing Date for Applications: 30 Apr 2010
College: College of Science, Engineering and Food Science
Contract Type: permanent whole-time
Job Type: Academic
Salary: €113,604 - €145,953
University College Cork (UCC) occupies a unique place in the history of
Computer Science and Information Technology - Boolean algebra, one of the
fundamental ideas underlying the design of both computer hardware and
software, was developed by George Boole, who was a professor of Mathematics
in the University.

Today, Computer Science, which is part of the College of Science,
Engineering and Food Science, is one of the largest academic units within
the University. There are about 450 undergraduate students, 100 students
following taught post-graduate programmes and 45 research students, the
vast majority at doctoral level. There are 30 academic and 13 support
staff. In addition, 32 post-doctoral researchers are employed in the
various research groups and centres within Computer Science.

Applications are invited for the above full-time permanent post.

The person appointed will be expected, if asked to do so, to serve as
Director of the Cork Constraint Computation Centre (4C), the largest
research group in Computer Science. Staff in 4C comprise 8 academic
staff, 22 research staff and 9 support staff; there are 21 research
students, the majority at doctoral level.

The appointee will have a doctorate in Computer Science or a related
discipline; a scholarly and research reputation of international standing
in Constraint Programming or a closely-related field, with a significant
record of sustained internationally published research; and a proven
track record of seeking and obtaining substantial funding for research.

UCC is committed to supporting its regional hinterland by engaging in
world-class research and education, with a diversified, international
university community. In line with this, Computer Science wishes to
strengthen its strategic capabilities at senior level to support the
continuing development of its teaching, research and publication
activities.

For further information see the documents below.

Informal enquiries may be made to Professor James Bowen, Head of Computer
Science, Tel: +353 21 420 5892 / Email: j.bowen@cs.ucc.ie

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Success stories

On June 13th 2015, the robot-lab Philae woke up on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko to resume a series of experiments interrupted seven months ago. These experiments were scheduled using Constraint Programming, and researchers of the team ROC of the LAAS-CNRS lab developed
propagation algorithms
to help the Scientific Operations and Navigation Centre (SONC) to efficiently achieve this task.